Volvo make some of the safest cars in the world. The company is also responsible for some of the best road safety designs in history. This latest invention is also sure to save lives – a pedestrian airbag. Here’s the update direct from Volvo:
The world’s first pedestrian airbag fitted as standard on the all-new Volvo V40 is the next step towards the manufacturers target that no-one should be killed or injured in a new Volvo by 2020.
The revolutionary new airbag is launched one year after Volvo, as a strategic partner of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), joined road safety experts and MPs to set the blueprint in the UK for safer roads over the next 10 years with the launch of the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety. Volvo’s new Pedestrian Airbag will go some way to help further reduce the number of fatalities involving pedestrians, currently 14 per cent in Europe and 25 per cent in China.
Every year, 1.3 million people are killed on the world’s roads with 24,510 killed or seriously injured in the UK alone. For Volvo, safety has been a key priority for 85 years and in 2008, launched a unique goal in that ‘By 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo’ and to contribute towards the aim, it has fitted technology including Pedestrian Detection, City Safety and the Pedestrian Airbag.
The Pedestrian Airbag technology was a world breakthrough when the all-new Volvo V40 was launched in Geneva earlier this year and will to be fitted as standard to all specifications. The system is active at speeds between 20 and 50 km/h. 75 per cent of all accidents involving pedestrians take place at up to 40 km/h.
I looked for an image, and wow! I don’t mind getting hit by that car (not that I’m being suggestive)! Well, it’s still a moving vehicle. It can still cause serious harm. The responsibility is shared by both the human behind the wheel and the one walking across the road. But that is one sweet ride!